Update Number Thirty-One!

Greetings from not-so-sunny Copenhagen Backers! We are excited to share with you here in Update #31 a general wrap-up to the project, we will post another update when everything is officially finished over here in the office, but for now, here is what’s up:

Physical Rewards:

Regarding our physical rewards, first we would like to say to our backers in the 100 dollar and above pledge brackets, thank you for your patience! It’s taken a while to get all of the physical rewards here from various parts of the world. We’ve learned a little bit about receiving international deliveries through the customs house, and a little bit more on the various methods available for shipping them out to you! It’s been an interesting series of phone calls, emails and snail letters but everything is finally ready.

We have now had all of the physical rewards delivered to the office and we’ve packed them all for shipping. Those of you receiving physical rewards should get a message to your Kickstarter inbox sometime in the next week with a confirmation number. That number will (apparently) let you monitor the physical rewards package as it is in transit to you. The packages are being delivered to the Post office tomorrow and boy are we excited to send them out to you!

Packaging up all the Physical Rewards!

Distribution Info:

Expeditions: Conquistador is now available digitally around the world via Steam, GOG, Greenman Gaming, Desura, GamersGate, and the Mac Game Store. You can pick up a physical copy in stores in select countries around the world including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, and Italy as well as many of the Spanish Speaking countries in the Americas.

Regionalization Info:

Expeditions: Conquistador is now available in a variety of languages including: English, Spanish, Italian, and German (and coming soon Russian)

Game Editor:

We have been talking for some time about the release of a game editor so that all of y’all in the modding community can go get your mod on with Ex:Con! The editor will become available via update at the same time as the new Russian language version.

New Website and Logo:

Now by popular demand (and some helpful comments by some backers) We have a brand-spanking-new website and company logo! We think it turned out quite nicely, check it out! www.logicartists.com

Things to Come:

We have been working like crazy the last couple of months on something… We wanna tell you all about it right now, but we need a bit more time with it before we release any info, we’re gonna announce it here for you guys (along with the soc.media sites) so stay tuned because exciting things are happening at the Logic Artists Studio!

Some Lessons Learned:

Regarding Kickstarter we setup our project after spending some time looking at what other game devs had done before us but nothing can compare to the lessons we learned about exclusive content when it comes to making games.

1. Give everyone a Beta Key. After reviewing our experience, and with the feedback from a number of backers, we can strongly recommend that you give all backers access to a beta key for your game. As a small team, it is difficult to get enough feedback pre-release regarding the user’s experience. We feel that you can’t have too much user feedback when it comes to making games and so for those of you out there working in small teams that are looking to kickstart a game the backers are incredibly helpful and passionate about the games they back. Let them help you!

2. Give exclusive in-game content, but only for a limited time. Backers, we know you love that juicy exclusive content! But it makes everyone else sad, and a bit jealous. Ultimately what we want to avoid as devs is exclusive in-game boosts. What we have learned is that this additional content was very cool. So for Kickstarter Devs, giving backers early access instead of completely exclusive assets might be a way to keep the general gaming community (non-backers) from feeling alienated.

3. Constant and Consistent Communication is key. We think that a bi-monthly or weekly update about the different trials of the project could be very valuable, not just to interested backers but to act as a developer diary of sorts, where we was devs can go back and be reminded of the different trials of development. We also think that this update should be performed by various members of the development team based on their role in the development.

What we have Achieved:

1. For our first PC title we are extremely proud of the current 77/100 Meta Score and user score of 8.3/10 on Meta Critic.

2. 30+ hours of Gameplay and the completion of a number of our KS stretch goals, even though we didn’t hit the stretch.

3. This has also allowed us to increase the size of the development team to 12 people which gives us a great deal more flexibility in our development process, and we have begun working on new projects. We’ve already got them in the pipeline, so you will be seeing more games released from us here at Logic Artists in the next few years.

Kudos:

Kudos to you backers! All that stuff we just wrote about in the update and more is thanks to you folks believing in our idea. We could not have done it without your support not just your donations but also all of the helpful comments and suggestions you have shared with us, both here and on the forums!

@Con Disagree. I prefer to take a pro consumer stand against exclusive anything in general. It is a divisive psychological ploy to build hype, artificial value and encourages the worse aspects of consumerism. Exclusives should be discouraged entirely.

Hate to say this guys but I have to disagree with the exclusive content aspect of this. The reward for people throwing money at an unfinished game is no small risk considering how many kickstarter games just dry up through mismanagement and such. But that's the point, backers take the risk and fund you despite having no real names back you and in return get extra stuff. Otherwise we might as well wait until its a sure thing and just buy it later (therefore risking the campaign succeeding full stop)

Just do what pre-purchase stuff do. As a backer you get it apart of the pledge and later on normal games can purchase the extra content separately as a mini content expansion
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Out of curiosity, did hooking up with BitComposer help or hinder the process? If it isn't too invasive to ask, did you guys make any money? Passion for games is why we are all here, but you guys do this for your living.

Congratulations on all your achievements. I'm proud to have backed this game. This is by far the best run Kickstarter I've seen by far. You guys delivered on all your promises and exceeded my expectations by far. Never once did I doubt this project would succeed or that I wouldn't like the end result. I've had my doubts about a lot of the projects I've backed and stopped caring about some as they take too time, but not this game. You guys made me feel like I was along for the ride and that made this game that much more special. This is by far the best Kickstarter I've backed and I'm glad that it's worked well for you too. I'm looking forward to whatever game comes next.

Kudos to you guys too. Your were on the bottom end of the bell curve of games I've backed (I reckon $250k is very little to put any game of substance together), but you've delivered way above what you promised and put a lot of the bigger names out there to shame by comparison. Do tell us what you're up to - can't wait for your next project.

Great wrap up!
About lesson 2): I have learned to not back projects offering any kind of ingame exclusive for higher tiers than the lowest with the game. As you write, this brings only forth the worst in human behaviour and corrupts the very reason I'm into games: To experience a world WITHOUT everyone having different starting conditions just like in the real world. Logically, I'll not buy or support games with microtransactions.